Guest Post: Making the Most Out of Every Day This Summer
This is a guest post by Theresa from Our Life in Words. Please stop by and visit her great blog!
My girls (ages 9 & 11) were only out of school for a few days when I heard, “Mom, I’m bored!”
My first reaction was what my mom used to say to me, “Is your closet clean and tidy? All your clothes hung up? Are your dresser drawers organized? Are all of your socks in the same drawer?”
As much as I never wanted to turn into my mom, summer is a great time to teach kids organization and how to clean up after themselves.
Summer is also an opportunity for parents to spend quality time with their kids doing all of those things they wish they had time to do during the year. It doesn’t have to take a lot of money.
Here are some fun *free* things you can do with your kids:
*Have a water fight; use the hose, water balloons, Super Soakers, rags & buckets
*Wash the car together – kids LOVE this!
*Make homemade play-doh together and play with it
*Go for a bike ride
*Go for a walk
*Play frisbee or catch
*Make a tea party for your little girl and use your real china & dress up
*Find a patch of lawn that doesn’t have any grass, turn the hose on and make mud pies with your son
*Make roads in the dirt with your boy, play with matchbox cars
*Check out what free summer programs your library is offering
*For more ideas on fun things to do with your kids for free over the summer, check out books or parenting magazines in your local library!
Work on school skills:
*Play Mad Libs – Kids LOVE Mad Libs and they are a great, fun way to teach parts of speech.
Google Free Mad Libs or check out Education Place.
*Play Math Bingo – I bought this game in the Dollar Store and my kids LOVE it!
*Sign up for summer reading programs at your local library
*Write a story with your kids. Start with a sentence and ask your children to each add a sentence. If they are too young to write, write it down for them. Have them illustrate it.
*Keep a journal with your kids of all of summer fun you have. Press flowers from your walks and glue them in. Or take photos of your fun and glue them in.
“The days are long, the years are short.” ~ Gretchen Rubin
Make the most of every moment with your child because childhood doesn’t last forever!
Do you have any suggestions for frugal fun this summer?
Theresa is a former teacher who spent nine years as a stay at home mom. She now works part-time as the Assistant Children’s Librarian at her local library. She blogs regularly at Our Life in Words and weekly at Three Thinking Mothers.
Posted on July 14, 2011, in Guest Posts, Seasons, Summer and tagged summer. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
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Fun and Dysfunction 
Great post with lots of super ideas 🙂 I love all the plugs for the library 😉
I am also a fan of Gretchen Rubin, by the way.
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hopin’ over from theresa’s blog…
great ideas, theresa.
i’ve been wanting to fill the trampoline up with balloons.
sounds fun, right?
if only i could time it when it’s not 102 degrees. 😉
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My son is 3. I heard the first “I’m bored” the other day, and so it begins. We keep pretty busy though and do lots of entertaining things (go mini golfing, go to chuckee cheese, the zoo, the mall, play outside, etc), so when it is time to relax, I feel justified. It’s like, “Dude. Figure it out. Find something to play with. It is relax time!”
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